Nadia Fink is an Argentine writer who came up with the idea of writing a collection of stories about strong women, breaking the stereotype of fairy tales, stories made for boys and girls looking to reverse the sexist ideas promoted by Disney princesses. Barbies and other gender clichés.
In what we are in the 21st century, the stereotype of the feminine remains very strong, one of the reasons why this happens in this way is that, since childhood, children’s stories have established in the imaginary the idea that the princess is a princess. ideal of a woman.
“Women with a past and men with a future are the most interesting people. Chavela Vargas?
From video games to Hollywood movies, everyone reinforces this stereotype that strongly marks children’s minds and has been since childhood, feeding the child’s mind with an outdated pattern of gender conditions.
Traditional fairy tales have a very similar narrative structure to each other. They are all fantastic love stories, where the center of conflict is a woman treated unfairly by fate. All, without exception, solve the problem in two ways: the magical intervention of another woman, the fairy, and the ultimate salvation thanks to a prince.
These stories end with the protagonist’s elevation to the role of princess, within an enchanted realm. This type of problem solving is reproduced hundreds of times, with some obvious adaptations, in various novels, series and films today.
But why is this kind of story negative if what is exalted is justice and happiness in love?
The most problematic thing about such stories is that they distort the essence of many values, for example, they create an arbitrary relationship between goodness and beauty, the princess is always a good person, but she is also always very beautiful, there are no ugly princesses. The ugly are always the bad guys, who conspire against the princess, mainly because they are jealous.
They also reinforce the idea that a woman’s greatest triumph is to find her prince. This conveys a misconception of love.
In true love, the story begins where fairy tales end. We don’t live happily ever after, because living together poses difficult challenges for any couple. And there are no princes, but men of flesh and blood who cannot always live up to the circumstances. expectations of the women who idealize them.
Finally, this kind of fantastic illusion leads to frustration and unhappiness, even if this is hard to believe, many people suffer throughout their lives for not finding or not being that ideal of woman or man, that ideal of love, and suffering replaces happiness with love. the real situations that life presents to us.
The two anti-princesses with which Nadia Fink opened her collection are Frida Kahlo and Violeta Parra, two women who did not wait for the day a prince would save them, escape and did not wait.
In their love stories there are contradictions, abandonments and inadequacies; there are also great achievements and individual development independent of the problems of romantic love; contrary to what might be assumed, these stories do not disappoint, but they represent a new interest rate: real-world interest.
Frida Kahlo was not the typical angelic girl who met the prince of her dreams. She was a woman marked by illness from a young age, who had a passionate and contradictory affair with a man who looked nothing like Ken, Barbie’s boyfriend. The interesting thing about this story is the way it marked Frida’s work: a true poetry of images.
Violeta Parra, the great Chilean artist, was not the woman who expected her first husband, they were not happy forever, since they separated, the first daughter she had with her second husband died at the age of two.
Your famous song? She certainly wasn’t the kind of woman who would inspire a Disney story.
There are many flesh-and-blood anti-princesses who have left their mark on the world, for refusing to act on gender stereotypes, women of great personality, able to face prejudice and dare to be free, so we can certainly say: Long live the strong woman!